8. Ray bundle size

This option is useful for distributed rendering to control how much of the work is handed to each machine. To utilize more of the processors of your render servers, you will need to use higher values. Lower values will obviously do the opposite and limit the rendering to your machine. It defaults to 16.

The ray bundle size can easily be set by either using the spinner or by entering the value manually

9. Show adaptive mask

When rendering progressively it is really helpful to be able to see which pixels still remain to be sampled. V-Ray shows this as a mask and it's as simple as turning the check box on and off. It's not rocket science! Sometimes it can be difficult to really tell the progress so this little tool helps.

This highlights in red all of the pixels which remain to be sampled

10. Feature compatibility

As I previously mentioned, this is a production rendering option. It is compatible with all of the V-Ray features, which is incredible – in comparison to the V-Ray RT option. Most of the time V-Ray RT could only ever be used during the development of a piece of work, especially if you were making use of some of the more complicated features within V-Ray. It even supports features like V-Ray Fog. Amazing!

One of these features it is compatible with is the render elements. Here you can see the Wire Color element is accessible in the same way you would normally use it

Pro tip: Controlling memory consumption

One of the downsides to the Progressive Rendering option is that more data needs to be kept in memory, especially when you are making use of other features such as render elements. It isn't a reason to avoid rendering progressively, but it is something to keep in mind to ensure that you don't run out of memory!

If you are having problems rendering using the progressive option then it might be worth investigating your memory consumption to see if that is the cause